Naruto 1. Prologue

**_I do not own Naruto.  
_**

_Not marble, nor the gilded monuments  
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;  
But you shall shine more bright in these contents  
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.  
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,  
And broils root out the work of masonry,  
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn  
The living record of your memory.  
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity  
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room  
Even in the eyes of all posterity  
That wear this world out to the ending doom.  
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,  
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes._

* * *

My father won't be here much longer. The days fall away from him like campfire ash in the wind. Sometimes he is with us, blind eye open wide as if trying to grasp at the light it cannot find. His warrior's hands tremble now, the steady protector in him having fled from aged limbs. Hands that once murdered and protected with the will of fire are all bent angles and sore joints. When he can gather it, his voice now wavers too; my daughter says he sounds like the breeze. She is a good girl, she takes a lot after me. And I of course take a lot after another woman: the woman my father sighs for in his reluctant old age.

I do not know her, my mother, in the way that a daughter should. But when I look into a mirror, or when I see myself reflected in my father's eye, I always have a distinct feeling she is there, lingering under the surface of my awareness like the speckled koi under the jeweled water of father's old garden pond. In the hot summer evenings of my girlhood father would settle onto the terraced porch with his old leather journal and play sentry while I navigated across the springy emerald grass to feed the fish scraps of bread hoarded in my pockets from dinner and lunch. "Be careful," his rich, strong voice would rise through the humid air, beckoning my small child feet back from the edge of the water where the koi stirred about like whirlpools, competing for the bread crumbs I tossed in. That such passive, lovely creatures could have such strong wills always fascinated me.

When I ran out of food and the koi returned to their gentle existence under the reflection of sky, I would wander back onto the terrace, my bare feet leaving stamps of dewy prints in my wake. Father, such a reticent man, would stay bowed over his writing, his journal balanced on his thigh and the pen decorating the page in a steadily increasing pattern of inky lace. Sometimes he would unseeingly extend a hand in my direction, giving me permission to sit by his side, or when I was lucky, to perch in his lap like a little sparrow on the statue of a warrior. I would watch the pen move over the paper with inattentive drowsiness, lulled by the security of his warmth, my hands rising up to lace and tug in his silver hair, to keep myself anchored to my semi-wakeful consciousness. If I asked what he was writing about, more to feel the way his voice rumbled out through his chest and into my back than because I really cared as I should have, the answer was always the same. "Your mother."

I know so little about her, but the facts seem unimportant. The way he covets her still is proof enough of the woman she was. To hold so closely someone that is no longer there must have been terrible for him. And yet he suffered it so well, so quietly and gently.

Father once caught a butterfly who, drunk with spring, had strayed into our kitchen while he was chopping vegetables for dinner and settled onto a leaf of purple cabbage. Its yellowy wings heavy with pollen had glowed against the dark background in the half-evening light. So startled was I by the sudden presence of the fairy in our kitchen, that my breath had shuddered out of my lips and the carrot I was holding had fallen from my hands. Father had looked at me then with the lovingly amused expression he wore whenever I spoke with him in my babyish serious way, his eye arching closed and a soft chuckle rising through his mask. Long slender fingers abandoned the radishes and deftly scooped up the little intruder into pale cupped palms. He turned away briefly, towards the open window that was the butterfly's portal into our home, but had stopped and looked at me curiously over a large sturdy shoulder. My wide-eyed captivation must have persuaded him to delay for he turned and gracefully kneeled down before me, like a prince bowing to a princess, his head still rising high above my crown of pink hair. His eyes swept across my face, tracing the fleeting expression of wonder on my lips and cheeks and eyelashes, as his palms opened up, revealing the living flower protected inside. He had held the fragile creature for me in his gentle hands as its wings shimmied and changed in the shifting evening light, folding and unfolding itself so beautifully before us.

I believe he held the memories of my mother in the same way.

I can hear his soft breaths behind me. He has come less often over the past week. Though I know it is close, the end of the world he has always been, I cannot make myself bear witness to it so I sit facing the window and not his bed. Childhood is not free, for as adults we have to repay our parent's tenderness three-fold. We must help them leave us, we must allow them to go. To assuage the difficulty of the present, we assume the burdens of the past for them, all while knowing they will not be there to help us bear the weight in the future. That explains the heaviness that has settled in my chest, like I have swallowed a pebble or an apple core and will now always feel this ache even when it has passed away from me.

Two days ago he came back to me, though only briefly. His hands struggling about, his lips whispering two simple words without fault until I had fetched the object of his desire. "My journal."

I had held his hand and pressed it onto the smooth worn spine, but he had refused to grasp it, shortly after retreating back into his shadowy dream world. No more words would be heard from my father that night, but his intent was clear. He wanted me to have it. Father wanted me to read of him and mother.

I hold the journal in my lap now, my fingertips dancing over the smooth leather hesitantly. I have only opened the journal once. This morning I pulled the cover back to look nervously inside and found a poem written in my father's strong steady script across the inside cover.

Fourteen lines of words I do not want to grasp the meaning of… a sonnet. I could not go on after reading the borrowed verse.

All around our home the trees, standing like columns of cold marble, languish for want of sun. The middle of winter seems too appropriate a time to die, but Father is determined to go now. He is brittle and frail while inside this journal my mother is held in permanent spring, a most apt season given her name. I do not know if I can handle it, the harsh dichotomy. Watching my father die while discovering my mother alive for the first time in my memory is a comic tragedy.

Father always did have a cruel sense of humor.

Why does he want me to read this now? Why not after he is gone?

I think it is because he cannot leave until he has ensured her immortality. I think he wants to make sure I carry her forward into the future. But Father probably does not realize that I will be carrying him too, like a fragile butterfly cupped in the palms of my smaller hands, for as much as this journal is about my mother, it is about him also.

Can love truly be bound in a book? I do not know, but I hope so.

I open to the fist page and begin to read.

* * *

_A/N: Thirteen more chapter to go. Inspired by the narrative style of Nadeem Aslam. THe sonnet at the beginning is 55. Reviewers are adored._


	2. Iconoclasts

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and make no money from the publication of this story.**

_Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,  
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;  
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,  
And burn the long-liv'd phoenix, in her blood;  
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,  
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,_

_To the wide world and all her fading sweets;  
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:  
O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,  
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;  
Him in thy course untainted do allow  
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.  
Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,  
My love shall in my verse ever live young._

_

* * *

  
_

_25 years before…_

When he found her she was laying face down in a pile of smoldering books.

The air was busy with ash, pieces of page still alight floating about, the words being reduced to kinetic energy in one glorious instance. It was severely perverse to him, this destruction of words, the razing of knowledge.

Kakashi quickly picked his way over the heaps of burning paper, the hunks of spine and cover and leaf simmering and consuming themselves. Sakura's supine body seemed discordantly round and soft among all of the sharp angles and hard edges.

His toes blistered from the drifts of hot ash, but the mask he wore over his mouth and nose guarded his lungs from the churning air.

He was a little surprised to find her in whole pieces. The explosion had ripped apart the majority of the library's structure and all of its contents. What remained was only the burning carcass of the frame, its jointed bones exposed to the bitter night air, its papery skin nearly roasted away.

Her survival might have been just chance. There was a mangled desk lying askew a few feet away from her prone body. She must have found shelter under it.

"Sakura!" Kakashi crouched down.

He didn't want to move her. An explosion with enough force to disembowel an entire building could easily break bones and sever spinal cords. But the walls were coming down around them and the floor was strewn with paper fuel.

The air was filled with the song of creaking and snapping joints.

"Sakura?"

When she did not respond, he acted.

One hand easing under her neck and the other gripping her round hip, he pulled gently. Her small body swayed and she was soon lying on her burned back, her expressionless face exposed fully to his eye.

A visual survey served no purpose other than to establish that she did not look alive.

His long battle-torn fingers sought for the point on her neck that would tell him the truth- find the hollow in the center and slide an inch down. Underneath her smoke-dyed skin he felt it, a gentle push against his finger, like a small winged insect had flown down her throat and was now flapping its wings about.

Somehow still alive.

A groaning behind him from one of the beast's ribs buckling warned Kakashi that he did not have much time. The smoke was starting to gather lower, having already filled up the large space above.

Things were about to come apart.

With as much caution as he could summon, Kakashi eased Sakura into his arms. Her head lulled back over his elbow and one thin arm hung down abandoned, her forearm charred and blistered from shielding her head during the blast.

Still crouching low with his burden, Kakashi quickly reached his free hand to the scroll pockets on his chest. The third from the right contained the one he needed. He flipped the buckle and the scroll tumbled spring-like out onto the sooty floor. It unrolled itself instantly, revealing long tails of delicate seals. Kakashi bit into the skin of his thumb as the edges of the paper began to curl in from the heat.

The smoke around them trembled. The roof began to scream in pain as it fell into itself.

Kakashi slammed his bleeding hand down on the paper, and in an instant, they were gone.

* * *

They tumbled back into existence three miles upwind on the roof of a bakery.

Next to a vent cap lounged a blissful Pakkun, taking full advantage of the warm tar roofing and the delicious odor. It was early evening and the lingering scent of the day's baked goods was still floating upward through the ceiling. It smelled like sweets and flour and baking powder.

But when Kakashi suddenly appeared in a violent haze of smoke, the little pug sprang up on his haunches, his peace disturbed.

"Boss, did you just…"

Kakashi collapsed forward onto his knees with a thump, though he managed to keep his cargo from tumbling out of his arms.

"…teleport!" The pug's voice was gruff with alarm.

Kakashi's chin hung down towards his chest as his shoulders dramatically rose and fell.

"Why did you do something so reckless?"

"I had to… They were probably …watching," he justified through syncopated breaths.

"They?"

"The ones… who blew up…library."

"What?" the pug ran to the southern face of the roof and leaped up onto the ledge. In the distance he saw a cloud of smoke rising into the evening sky like a great black sail over the sleek fleet of modern buildings.

"Kuso."

When Pakkun returned to his master's side, Kakashi had regained his bearings. He lowered the still body from his arms and onto the warm roof.

Sakura didn't move.

"Is she dead?" the pug asked quietly.

Her face was as still as granite. Kakashi leaned over her mouth. A small rush of air tickled over the shell of his ear.

"Not yet," he answered like a blunt knife.

They both sat stalled for a moment, one overcome by immense relief, the other extreme worry.

"I need to roll her over." He didn't want to do it. He knew how charred her back was and that he didn't have the capacity to do much, if anything, about it. But infection was quick to set in with burns.

"Where are you going to hide her?" Pakkun called as he scrambled over to Kakashi's stashed rucksack and pulled it open with his mouth. He rummaged inside for a moment before grabbing a corner of a blanket between his teeth and tugging.

Kakashi turned her over slowly. "I don't know. My contacts have gone underground. And I have no idea where she's been staying."

His fingers formed five seals and then he placed green-glowing hands over Sakura's blistered back. He could manage to sterilize her burns at the very least, though his energy was flickering and wavering as it licked over bubbling skin. The long distance teleportation of two bodies had charged an expensive toll from his chakra reserve.

Pakkun dropped the green blanket at his master's feet and watched the flickering light of his chakra with disapproval.

After making less than adequate progress, Kakashi halted his healing. They were unacceptably exposed up on the roof now that he knew Sakura could be a target. Though, if she was being watched, pursuit was unlikely. Even if the bomber had seen Kakashi rush into the burning building, he surely hadn't seen them exit. There was no need to flee the city for safer harbor just yet. Sakura definitely wouldn't survive a journey in her condition and the option of abandoning her to a hospital was ignored.

"Let's get inside," Kakashi mumbled as he wrapped the blanket over Sakura's back and gathered her into his arms again. He carried her to a derelict sky light and smashed one foot through yellowing glass. The large pane crumbled away like sand and fell down into the dark shop beneath them.

He stepped off the ledge and gracefully fell into the quiet space.

When his feet touched the ground it was soft yet firm. Pakkun landed smally behind him with an 'oof' and a sneeze.

"Flour sack," the dog huffed.

Kakashi used the filtered evening light to locate an electric switch, flipping it on quickly with a nimble elbow. Overhead fluorescent bulbs sprang to life with a hesitant hum, illuminating what surely was the bakery's old kitchen. Stainless steel and a fine dusting of white powder covered every plane.

He carried Sakura's still body to the center of the kitchen and laid her face-down on a large, metal work table.

"You can go," he directed his summon without looking away from the girl's back.

"Well, take care of her then," the dog gruffly replied before vanishing.

After a small nod to no one, Kakashi washed his hands in a huge steel sink and then got to work peeling Sakura's melted shirt away from her mottled skin.

* * *

A cursory search of her hip bag provided Kakashi with no clues: her small first aid kit, a modestly filled coin purse, a key on a ubiquitous bank keychain, a ball point pen, a broken wrist watch, an empty leather-bound journal, and a thick, old book. But, strangely, no weapons.

Kakashi arranged her belongings on a countertop in a straight line.

From her first aid kit he withdrew a vial of smelling salts. After contemplating for a moment he also pulled out an alcohol pad and a syringe filled with morphine to forestall the pain.

It was time to wake her up.

With sure hands he sterilized a small circle on her upper arm, its pinkness appearing discordant surrounded by the rest of her blackened skin, and then slid the needle in and pushed the plunger all the way down. It was the best he could do for her.

He gathered her wrists into one long hand and squatted down so that his face would be level with hers when she awoke. The cap of the vial was pulled off by his teeth through the mask and then held directly beneath her nose.

Sakura started on her next inhale, her head jerking backwards slightly. An exhale and then another spasm.

On the third inhale she moaned and her eyelashes fluttered.

"Sakura, wake up," he commanded.

Her neck pulled back away from the open vial and her wrists twisted weakly in his hands.

"Open your eyes Sakura."

He saw a peek of green under her pink lashes. She blinked a few, slow times and then her murky gaze shifted to his face. Her lips moved noiselessly, but he knew what she was asking.

"Yes. It's me. You are badly burned. On your back. "

She tugged at her wrists and showed him rows of white teeth through a grimace. "No. Your forearms are burned too."

Her eyes closed again, like she was surrendering. "Hey. Hey! Sakura, wake up."

They opened.

"I gave you a dose of morphine. But that's all there is. You have to heal yourself. Right now," his voice was stern.

Her jaw was hardened and straight with pain. Her lips trembled. She looked at him distantly, as if she was at the bottom of a river looking up, as if she couldn't breathe.

"Right now," he repeated. His breath wavered slightly.

* * *

The clock on the wall told him that four hours had passed. Sakura was sleeping on the table like a corpse. With his constant commands she had managed to heal the worst of her wounds, though he was sure there would be dramatic scarring that only her most focused techniques could have prevented.

After she passed out again, Kakashi had gently propped her up into a sitting position, with her bare breasts pressed against his vest and her bare cheek pressed against his mask, and wound a long spool of bandage around her torso and arms to cover the fragile, shiny skin she had knitted.

And then he had laid her back down and waited. The digital clock on the wall blared the time at him steadily. He sat on the tile floor and incrementally shifted his gaze between Sakura and the clock. There was no ticking from the electric timepiece, but the feeble in and out of her breathing seemed to give beat to the passing minutes just as well.

In the frozen room, with the frozen girl, Kakashi felt as if time could have stopped.

To distract himself, he played with a kunai he had withdrawn from his bag, twirling it around his index finger, flipping it from palm to palm, and balancing it on point on his thumb nail. His sensei's weapon had heavy sentimental value, but it was also extremely useful. It acted as a buoy which he could use to pull himself out of rough situations. His intuition had served well him again when he decided to leave his bag, and subsequently the kunai, behind with Pakkun before seeking Sakura out.

Up on the wall, a nine shifted to a zero. Kakashi's attention shifted back to the girl.

He pulled himself up from the ground slowly, his body stiff from not moving. Sakura did not stir.

Desperate to distract himself, Kakashi studied the parade of her items again. The pen worked well enough when he scribbled on a box of corn starch. The watch did not work at all. The leather of the empty journal was soft and of good quality. The book was old and filled with small, intricate script. Kakashi indifferently turned through a few pages then set it back down. He had given up reading a while ago.

Above him the air conditioner churned to life, working hard to hold back the thick summer heat outside. The room kitchen felt even colder and emptier.

Abandoning the search for a suitable distraction, Kakashi turned to study Sakura. Her chest barely rose and fell, her lips were sealed closed and stretched thin, the slope of her nose and arc of her forehead stone still. Her hair and skin were covered with ash. She looked like a weather-worn statue.

At the sink Kakashi filled a mixing bowl with warm, soapy water and then pulled a checkered rag from a drawer. He set both down on the table on which she slept.

"Sakura?" he murmured hesitantly.

She did not stir.

He dragged the rag up her neck, along a cheek, and across her brow. The water ran down her skin in elegant curves. He tenderly washed the soot from her chin, her neck, her forehead.

He wanted to leave no trace of what had happened on her motionless face.

An abrupt cacophony of a siren from outside tore through the soft silence. Kakashi jerked.

His Galatea opened her eyes.

The searing blare of noise filled up all of the space in the room.

"It looks like they've started again," he observed, looking down into the girl's cumpling face.

"...safe?" Sakura struggled out in a gritty, burdened voice.

"Yes, we're safe." He placed the cloth back in the bowl of water and stepped back. "For now."

* * *

**A/N: The sonnet is 19. The sonnets will be integral to the development of figurative language in each chapter as well as the central theme. Thank you to those who have reviewed and given their support. I hope this chapter didn't fall short of your expectations.**


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Naruto, Romance